Tag Archives: residential

Cliff Dwelling

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Cliff Dwelling is an oddly shaped, exotically decorated apartment building overlooking New York’s Riverside Park at W 96th Street.

The shape – dictated by the parcel of land left over after other developers picked their plots – is a thin north-pointing wedge. The decoration, white terra cotta in desert-Western motifs, is from the imagination of Herman Lee Meader (who used similar designs on the Friends House on E 25th Street). Don’t be shocked by the swastikas – they were used by the Navajo (and many other cultures) centuries before Nazism.

While the yellow brick facade is memorable, the apartments inside were not (at least in their tiny original five-to-a-floor form). After the building went co-op in 1979, residents began buying up and combining adjoining apartments. According to City Realty, the building now has just 43 units.

Cliff Dwelling Vital Statistics
  • Location: 243 Riverside Drive at W 96th Street
  • Year completed: 1917
  • Architect: Herman Lee Meader
  • Floors: 13
  • Style: neo-Classicism
Cliff Dwelling Recommended Reading

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241 Central Park West

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241 Central Park West is easily confused with 55 Central Park West – they were both designed by Schwartz & Gross; what’s more, the developer of record is 55 Central Park West Corp. (according to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission).

The brick and cast stone facade takes up the entire blockfront between W 84th and W 85th Street. Protruding decorative elements – flowering stalks of some kind – decorate the building’s base and crown; otherwise the structure is quite plain.

The building is not without fans – you can even order a pewter model! (see below)

241 Central Park West Vital Statistics
  • Location: 241 Central Park West at W 84th Street
  • Year completed: 1931
  • Architect: Schwartz & Gross
  • Floors: 19
  • Style: Art Deco
  • New York City Landmark: 1990
241 Central Park West Recommended Reading

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Peter Stuyvesant

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Peter Stuyvesant is a Beaux Arts apartment house, with a facade gently curved to follow scenic Riverside Drive. The colorful, textured two-story crown is missing its original massive cornice (see archive photo), but it’s still a beauty. Overall, many horizontal divisions minimize the building’s height.

The building has also been stripped of its balconies – traces are still visible on the facades.

The building’s entry is modest: One story – no portico, canopy or marquee – but the door itself is exquisitely detailed iron grillwork set in a deeply cut cast stone frame.

New York City “Boy Mayor” John Purroy Mitchel (he was 34 when elected) lived here – and accidentally shot ex-Senator William H. Reynolds in front of the building as the pair returned from target practice. Mitchel carried a revolver for protection – he had escaped an assassination attempt only two months earlier.

According to City Realty’s review, the Peter Stuyvesant went co-op in 1988.

Peter Stuyvesant Vital Statistics
  • Location: 258 Riverside Drive at W 98th Street
  • Year completed: 1909
  • Architect: William L. Rouse
  • Floors: 12
  • Style: Beaux Arts
Peter Stuyvesant Recommended Reading

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St. Urban

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St. Urban is a grandiose Beaux Arts apartment building, replete with turret, cupola and a massive mansard roof punctured by elaborate dormer windows.

It’s still an impressive sight for condo-era New York, though it has lost some of its grandeur: Gone are the two belts of balconies at the fourth and tenth floors; the slate roof was replaced with copper; rather pedestrian windows and skylights were installed above the dormers.

Why such an elaborate facade for mere apartments? Architectural historian Andrew Alpert notes that in 1905, “apartment” was still considered a French concept – so French architecture was appropriate. And Beaux Arts was the French style du jour.

The St. Urban was designed to appeal to the very wealthy: Four 12-room luxury apartments per floor, each including maids’ quarters, wall safes, libraries and other “necessities.”

The building went co-op in 1966.

St. Urban Vital Statistics
  • Location: 285 Central Park West at W 89th Street
  • Year completed: 1905
  • Architect: Robert T. Lyons
  • Floors: 13
  • Style: Beaux Arts
  • New York City Landmark: 1990
St. Urban Recommended Reading

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Dallieu

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Dallieu – what’s left of it – is a wonderful example of texture in architecture, designed by New York masters George and Edward Blum. The New York Times’ Christopher Gray called it, “one of the great apartment buildings of the West Side.”

Sadly, the building lost its balconies, parapet and original windows and entrance doors, which added to Dallieu’s character. And in places the owners replaced the original roman brick with common brick – mismatched in both color and shape. Still, the remaining terra cotta bands and roman brick are beautiful, often described as “woven” or “textile” in appearance.

Dallieu Vital Statistics
  • Location: 838 West End Avenue at W 101st Street
  • Year completed: 1913
  • Architect: George & Edward Blum
  • Floors: 13
  • Style: Art Nouveau
Dallieu Recommended Reading

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Potter Building

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Orlando Potter set out to make a fireproof building. It became “one of New York’s most significant surviving tall office buildings of the period prior to the full development of the skyscraper,” according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission. “Its brickwork is among the handsomest in New York City.”

The 1886 Potter Building replaced the ill-fated headquarters of the New York World, which had the distinction of burning up in the shortest time on record. Potter, the building’s owner, set out to make the replacement fireproof.

Iron framing and terra cotta fireproofing were key elements in the plan designed by architect Norris G. Starkweather. The structure represents an early phase of metal framing: Iron columns and joists supported the floors and interior of the building; the exterior walls supported themselves. (To bear the weight, those brick walls are 40 inches thick at the base and 20 inches thick at the top.) Terra cotta tiles surround the iron columns and joists, to protect them from the heat of a fire.

Abundant brownstone-colored terra cotta also decorated the red brick exterior. Starkweather combined four different architectural styles in the 11-story building (which was more than double the height of the previous structure). He emphasized vertical lines – counter to then-current practice. One critic condemned the resulting architecture as “coarse, pretentious, overloaded and intensely vulgar” and in its verticality, “spindling.” Starkweather died before the building was finished.

Potter liked the terra cotta so much, he founded New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co. and became one of the country’s largest producers.

Fast forward to 1973: After eight sales and 87 years, the Potter Building wound up in the hands of Pace College. The school planned to demolish this (and neighboring buildings) to build a large office tower. That project fizzled, and Pace sold the Potter Building in 1979 to 38 Park Row Associates – which converted the building to co-op loft apartments.

Remarkably, the new owners preserved and restored the exterior at great expense – 17 years before the building was designated a NYC landmark.

Potter Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 145 Nassau Street at Beekman Street (block-through to 38 Park Row)
  • Year completed: 1886
  • Architect: Norris Starkweather
  • Floors: 11
  • Style: mix of Queen Anne, neo-Grec, Renaissance Revival, and Colonial Revival
  • New York City Landmark: 1996
Potter Building Recommended Reading

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370 Central Park West

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370 Central Park West, a 1918 example of half-timbered Tudor architecture that’s unusual for New York, was designed and built by Fred F. French Company. The firm in 1927-1932 developed Tudor City – though some sources dispute that those buildings are in Tudor style.

The building has considerable frontage of W 97th Street, broken up by wide and deep light courts. The effect is of five separate row houses – a micro community instead of a single apartment building. The light courts were originally walled in at street level, to create private gardens. The walls have since been replaced by iron fences. The building was converted to a cooperative in 1982.

370 Central Park West is just outside NYC’s Upper West Side / Central Park West Historic District, but just inside the National Register of Historic Places’ Central Park Historic District.

The Fred F. French Company also designed Gardens Apartment (now Tennis View Apartments) in Forest Hills – a smaller version of 370 Central Park West “more adapted to country use” according to Architecture (October, 1918).

370 Central Park West Vital Statistics
  • Location: 370 Central Park West at W 97th Street
  • Year completed: 1918
  • Architect: Fred F. French Company
  • Floors: 6
  • Style: Tudor
  • National Register of Historic Places: 1982
370 Central Park West Recommended Reading

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London Terrace

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London Terrace shows that “timing is everything” can trump “location, location, location.” This whole-block residential development of Henry Mandel (“the Donald Trump of the 1920s”) had the bad luck of being built just as the country fell into the Great Depression. The 14-building, 1,670-unit project bankrupted Mandel and slipped into foreclosure. Just across Ninth Avenue – but built three decades later – the 10-building, 2,820-unit Penn South complex had a considerably easier life.

To be fair, the Penn South co-op had the backing of the then-giant International Ladies Garment Workers Union and a 25-year New York City tax abatement, advantages unavailable to London Terrace.

Mandel’s ambitious Chelsea complex – the city’s then-largest – included a central courtyard closed at the ends by a large indoor pool on Tenth Avenue and a restaurant on Ninth Avenue. In addition, there were separate rooftop exercise and recreation areas for children and adults, a telephone message center, page boys to run errands and other amenities that the rich were accustomed to. Yet the buildings were not for the rich: Most apartments were studio or one-bedroom units – no servants rooms here!

After the financial dust settled, London Terrace split into two developments with somewhat scaled-back amenities. The four corner buildings, dubbed London Terrace Towers, were converted to co-ops in 1986. The 10 mid-block buildings are known as London Terrace Gardens, and are still rental apartments. The pool and rooftop facilities are still in use.

The Tuscan architectural style, detailed and multi-colored, breaks up what could otherwise be a bleak and monolithic monster.

Some online accounts claim that Mandel jumped from the roof of London Terrace in 1934 after declaring bankruptcy. Good drama, but not true. His 1942 New York Times obituary reports that he died at Lenox Hill Hospital on October 10, 1942 after a short illness.

If you’re looking for drama, look no further than the story of Tillie Hart: She refused to move for the bulldozers, claiming her house’s sublease had another year to run. Even after losing court battles, Ms. Hart reportedly barricaded herself until sheriffs forcibly removed her belongings to the sidewalk.

The most recent drama was a battle over rights to use the swimming pool.

London Terrace Vital Statistics
  • Location: W 23rd to W 24th Street, Ninth to Tenth Avenue
  • Year completed: 1931
  • Architect: (Victor) Farrar & (Richard) Watmough
  • Floors: 22
  • Style: Tuscan
London Terrace Recommended Reading

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Cherokee Apartments

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Cherokee Apartments are beautiful – and beautifully maintained – apartments designed specifically for families with tuberculosis patients. Originally known as Shively Sanitary Tenements (aka East River Homes, aka Vanderbilt model tenements), the buildings have rare features you’ll probably never see elsewhere.

Dr. Henry Shively, a prominent physician who advocated home treatment of tuberculosis, persuaded Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt to endow $1.5 million to build and maintain a model healthful living environment. Henry Atterbury Smith designed the four interconnected buildings.

You might say the apartments are built of air – providing abundant fresh air dictated many design features. The roofs had open-air recreation facilities; most street-facing windows were triple-sash floor-to-ceiling affairs opening on to balconies – to encourage open-air sleeping. Gas stoves were all equipped with forced-air ventilating hoods; even the staircases were open-air. (The staircases were also notable for having two handrails – one for children, one for adults – and seats on each landing in case you needed to rest.) The “lobbies” are Guastavino tile-lined vaults open at each end.

The sanitary, airy housing was intended to alleviate living conditions of the poor. But no sooner than the buildings were completed, architect Henry A. Smith declared all such housing a failure. “The model tenements are too expensive. They are built for the very poor, but the very poor do not live in them. They can’t afford it,” declared Smith in a New York Times feature.

The New York Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor leased 48 of the 383 apartments as a “Home Hospital.” In 1923 the charitable trust that governed East River Homes was dissolved and the buildings sold to City and Suburban Homes Company. In the 1930s the rooftop recreational facilities were removed and apartments were extensively remodeled. In 1986 the buildings were converted to a co-op, and renamed Cherokee Apartments.

Cherokee Apartments Vital Statistics
  • Location: Cherokee Place between E 77th and E 78th Streets
  • Year completed: 1912
  • Architect: Henry Atterbury Smith
  • Floors: 6
  • Style: Beaux Arts
  • New York City Landmark: 1985
Cherokee Apartments Recommended Reading

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74 E 79th Street

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74 E 79th Street is an oddity of New York architecture: Three landmark row houses gave their lives to let this 19-story tower rise.

The result was jeered by the “AIA Guide to New York City” as “A strange tower looms over Victorian town houses: Parisian Left Bank studios at the top, boredom at the waist, and a rich row of brick and brownstone along the street-front (all part of a zoning package).”

According to The New York Times’ account, the original developer got a Buildings Department permit to erect an 18-story apartment tower at 72 and 74 E 79th Street in 1980 – but demolition of the old buildings was delayed. In 1981 the Landmarks Preservation Commission created the Upper East Side Historic District, which includes those buildings. Meanwhile, new owners applied to change their plans; Department of Buildings agreed to the changes. Preservationists, including the LPC, cried foul and sued to stop work.

The plot thickens: City Council passed the “sliver law” prohibiting ultra-narrow buildings. The proposed structure didn’t meet “sliver law” standards, so the project came to a screeching halt. By the time that the Department of Buildings was able to green-light the project – but back with the original plans – the partner with the financing lost interest.

The owner of 76 E 79th Street then swooped in, buying the unbuildable lots next door. The new three-lot site was now wide enough to satisfy the “sliver law” and a new tower plan was devised to incorporate the historic row house facades.

74 E 79th Street Vital Statistics
  • Location: 72-76 E 79th Street between Madison and Park Avenues
  • Year completed: 1884; conversion 1988
  • Architect: Anson Squires (72 & 74); James E. Ware (76); Conklin & Rossant (conversion)
  • Floors: 19
  • New York City Landmark: 1981
74 E 79th Street Recommended Reading

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